I think we are on step 7, "From Apathy to Dependence".<br /><br />--------<br /><br />Why Democracies Fail!<br /> <br />At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new Constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinburgh) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.<br /><br />"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."<br /> <br />"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." Benjamin Franklin <br /><br />"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:<br /><br />From bondage to spiritual faith;<br />From spiritual faith to great courage;<br />From courage to liberty;<br />From liberty to abundance;<br />From abundance to complacency;<br />From complacency to apathy;<br />From apathy to dependence;<br />From dependence back into bondage."<br /><br /> The internal collapse of all nations require the concurrence of a nation's judiciary, and without such concurrence, there can be no police state established. Through the passage of more and more laws, with its attendant finger-pointing of blame, People begin to discover hypocrisy, and thus they will learn from government to disrespect law and authority until there is a complete collapse into anarchy and bondage. This is why all nations shall either be governed by God, or by tyrants!
<br /><br />John Kerry sure won't. He was in Portland this afternoon. He stopped by a vocational re-training facility. They played a short clip of his speech on the local news. <br /><br />and I quote "We'll make America fair again" (possible paraphrase , but you get the point.) In other words, he didn't have anything to say, as usual.